Scott Skiles has been on the job as the Orlando Magic’s coach for a week.
Apart from fighting off a case of bronchitis and speaking with the team’s players, he’s spent the last few days processing the research the front office already has gathered for the upcoming NBA Draft.
The Orlando Sentinel spoke with Skiles on Friday.
Here’s a transcript of that conversation.
Orlando Sentinel: Where do you stand on hiring a coaching staff? Are you going to get James Borrego back?
Scott Skiles: That’s kind of up to J.B. He and I spoke again yesterday. I gave him a week — I gave him until Monday — to see if there was anything out there that interested him, and I believe he’s talked to a team. So I think he’s kind of waiting to see what happens with that. I’m certainly not going to stand in his way. We’ll just kind of see how it plays out over the weekend.
OS: Rob Hennigan has said you’ll bring structure and accountability. How will you go about doing that with a young team?
Skiles: You’ve got to be consistent every day in your own approach. I’ve never really understood how a coach can preach about consistency and being ready to play, keeping your emotions in check and having poise out there under pressure and chaos if the coach doesn’t do it. So that will be the first step toward accountability: that the players see us. Every minute of every practice will be organized. We’ll know exactly where we’re supposed to be, what we’re supposed to do, who we’re supposed to be responsible for, what the drill or the scrimmage or whatever it is that we’re doing is supposed to look like. In theory, what happens — and I know it’s more than a theory because I’ve seen it happen — is the players draw comfort from that. So that’s the first step: that they see and understand that and it’s very clear what’s expected of them. And then we just go from there.
As I’ve said a little bit already, the great teams hold themselves accountable. Each player at his locker holds himself accountable, and then if something kind of flares up in the team, the players kind of nip it in the bud. And then if that doesn’t happen, then maybe one or two of the assistant coaches do. And, then, eventually it kind of comes to the head coach.
I’m not a micromanager. The players will see that I’m delegating authority to my coaches to coach, and I think that’s important as well: that they kind of understand we’re all in this together. I think that’s where all the accountability starts: that they see my own approach and they understand what I’m trying to get to.
OS: You were known as a tough player. Can a coach make his players tough?
Skiles: I’m just arbitrarily picking out one thing … If you’ll step up in an NBA game and take a charge, that signifies some toughness. Well, sometimes you’ll watch a team and you won’t see any of that going on and somebody could say, “They’re not very tough.”
Well, it could just be they haven’t got their habits in order enough, that they’re not in position at the right time and place to even take that charge. Again, that’s just one little example. That’s an area that a coach can help in. Somebody could look and say, “Oh, they’re getting tougher.” Well, actually, they didn’t get any tougher. They weren’t there in time before, and now they’re there.
One thing is you have to talk about it every day. You have to talk about it [like], “Look, guys, it’s incredibly hard to win one game, let alone a playoff game.” … You just have to keep talking about it. You’ve got to show things on tape where we can get tougher. You’ve got to show where we can get mentally tougher. Maybe there’s a game or a scrimmage or an exhibition game [or] an early-season game where we sort of wilt down the stretch. You’ve got to look at those minutes. You’ve got to look at plays that can be made. And you’ve got to hope to just sort of step-by-step, incrementally guys go from sort of young players that are good players that don’t understand how tough it is yet to being tougher. I know it can be done. But it’s not because the coach is tough and he waves a magic wand and everybody gets tougher. It’s because the players are taking ownership of it, know how important it is and they’re just getting more mentally tough.
OS: You’ve had a chance to assess your team. What does the team need to do better to win more games?
Skiles: My sense is I’ve got a whole bunch of really good hard-working young guys that want to get better, and that’s really good. That’s step No. 1: the willingness to listen, learn, grow with each other. There’s no major chemistry issues in that group, which is great. So now you can come at it from a basketball standpoint.
Our backcourt — and I’m going to put Evan [Fournier] in that group with Elfrid [Payton] and Victor [Oladipo] — in my opinion, has a ton of potential. I think those guys should be excellent defensively, and they will be. There’s a nice mix in that three-guard group of ball-handling, shooting, passing. We’ve got to get better with our decision-making off the dribble.
We’ve got to get better at making the extra pass as a group, and now I’m talking about everybody. I don’t like to say “all the little things.” There are no little things. … There’s so many things we can get better at. But just as far as having the pieces to help mold and work with, there’s a lot here to be excited about.
OS: What do you see as some of the strengths Nik Vucevic has and some of the areas that he needs to improve?
Skiles: When I go roster to roster, I just don’t see a lot of the big people who have that type of skill set. He doesn’t dribble 15 times before he makes a move. He’s got a nice economy with his dribble. It’s one, two dribbles — boom! — he shoots a jump hook or has a pump fake and move. Obviously, he steps out and shoots.
That combination [is rare]. You’ve got the Gasol brothers, you’ve got Vooch and you start running out of names pretty quick. That list is small. So that’s an advantage for us and we need to use that.
Having said that, he’s got to be more of a factor on the opposite end of the ball. He’s a good defensive rebounder, which is outstanding, and there’s something that goes back to my original comment about toughness. Usually guys that aren’t tough are not on the defensive boards because they don’t want people jumping all over their backs, they don’t want to bang [or] it’s not a point of emphasis. Well, it is [a point of emphasis] for him.
So there’s some toughness there, no doubt about it. It’s just now we’ve got to transfer some of it onto the way he moves around defensively and his responsibilities in the group with his coverages and things like that. But there’s no reason he can’t do it.
OS: One the things you’ve been said to do with your teams is you drill a lot defensively from the beginning of training camp. Is that what they should expect?
Skiles: Yes. That’s the goal, anyway. My experience is players draw comfort in that. There’s nothing that makes you feel more uncomfortable defensively than you’re looking around at each other like, “Who’s supposed to be where?” We’ve got to solve that. Hopefully, in camp, the middle of camp, the end of camp — whenever it is — light bulbs will start going off. We’re going to drill so much … that you take away all the doubt to where we’re supposed to be. …
We’ve got to get to a point where we believe we can guard every situation because we know exactly what we’re supposed to do and now we’ve just got to go out there and do it.
OS: What did your time at Plymouth High in Indiana, playing for coach Jack Edison and winning the state title, teach you about coaching?
Skiles: He’s a great coach, period. … What I learned personally is that preparation is the key and then you go out and you let the chips fall where they may. … So we were ready for every possible scenario that anybody could think of. … And because of that, we had tremendous chemistry and for that period of time in our lives, we accomplished something that was very special to us.
OS: Did you learn similar lessons from Jud Heathcote at Michigan State?
Skiles: Different lessons. I went from a group of guys that grew up together to a group of guys from all over the place. Now you’re in a college program where he’s got to blend different personalities. …
One of the things that Jud was just outstanding at … [was] he would tailor his offense around what guys could do as opposed to just having an offense that he ran every single year. So that was another valuable lesson to learn: You’ve got to really take a look at guys and really try to put them in positions where they could have success and, just as importantly, keep them out of positions where they can’t.
jrobbins@orlandosentinel.com. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.
